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Full-Text Articles in Biochemistry

Minimalistic Peptide-Based Supramolecular Systems Relevant To The Chemical Origin Of Life, Daniela Kroiss Sep 2019

Minimalistic Peptide-Based Supramolecular Systems Relevant To The Chemical Origin Of Life, Daniela Kroiss

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

All forms of life are based on biopolymers, which are made up of a selection of simple building blocks, such as amino acids, nucleotides, fatty acids and sugars. Their individual properties govern their interactions, giving rise to complex supramolecular structures with highly specialized functionality, including ligand recognition, catalysis and compartmentalization. In this thesis, we aim to answer the question whether short peptides could have acted as precursors of modern proteins during prebiotic evolution. Using a combination of experimental and computational techniques, we screened a large molecular search space for peptide sequences that are capable of forming supramolecular complexes with adenosine …


Electron Decoupling With Chirped Microwave Pulses For Magic Angle Spinning Dynamic Nuclear Polarization Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Edward Paul Saliba Aug 2019

Electron Decoupling With Chirped Microwave Pulses For Magic Angle Spinning Dynamic Nuclear Polarization Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, Edward Paul Saliba

Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Dynamic nuclear polarization (DNP) is a method of generating hyperpolarization of nuclear spins for nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Coherent, time domain techniques make the possibility of DNP directly to spins of interest at room temperature and higher feasible in magic angle spinning (MAS) NMR, allowing for optimal experimental repetition times to be limited by the T_1 of the electron, rather than a much longer T_1DNP, with excellent resolution. The strong hyperfine couplings that make such direct DNP transfers possible, however, can lead to short nuclear relaxation times that result in broadening of nuclear resonances and reduce sensitivity. This dissertation …


Investigating The Rotary Mechanism Of Atp Synthase Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations, Angela Marcela Murcia Rios Apr 2019

Investigating The Rotary Mechanism Of Atp Synthase Using Molecular Dynamics Simulations, Angela Marcela Murcia Rios

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

F1-ATPase is a motor protein that can use ATP hydrolysis to drive rotation of the central subunit. The γ C-terminal helix constitutes of the rotor tip that is seated in an apical bearing formed by the α3β3 head. It remains uncertain to what extent the γ conformation during rotation differs from that seen in rigid crystal structures. Existing models assume that the entire γ subunit participates in every rotation. Here we develop a molecular dynamics (MD) strategy to model the off-axis forces acting on γ in F1-ATPase. MD runs showed stalling of the …


Solvation Thermodynamic Mapping In Computer Aided Drug Design, Steven Ramsey Feb 2019

Solvation Thermodynamic Mapping In Computer Aided Drug Design, Steven Ramsey

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The displacement of water from surfaces upon biomolecular recognition and association makes a significant contribution to the free energy changes of these processes. We therefore posit that accurate characterization of local structural and thermodynamic molecular water properties can improve computational model accuracy and predictivity of recognition and association processes. In this thesis, we discuss Solvation Thermodynamic Mapping (STM) methods that we have developed using inhomogeneous fluid solvation theory (IST) to better characterize active site water structural and thermodynamic properties on protein surfaces and the open source tools that we have developed, GIST-CPPTRAJ and SSTMap, which implement these methods which we …